


And it's whispered that soon

by zedtheunicorn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angels, Angst, Chuck is God, Death, Gen, Heaven, Hell, Lucifer in the Cage, POV Lucifer, POV Third Person, Rage, Sam Winchester - Freeform, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-18
Updated: 2016-08-18
Packaged: 2018-08-09 14:38:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7805704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zedtheunicorn/pseuds/zedtheunicorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because away from God’s light, heaven is a cruel, bitter dream, and there’s nowhere colder.<br/>Because an archangel without a purpose is nothing but a phantom limb, wondering when it will disappear. Within the Cage, time is the only thing he is not estranged from, albeit it works strangely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And it's whispered that soon

**Author's Note:**

> Realised I've never written a Lucifer fic before now, though writing about heaven and things is a little uncomfortable. Title is a Led Zeppelin lyric, you know the one.

 

Lucifer’s bones will never be warm again, so he stays leaning against the metal, ignoring the attempt his grace makes in trying to keep him less than freezing. The bars groan as one of his faces - the lion, probably - gnaws at them. He presses back against the boundary, feeling teeth scrape unnaturally against the barbs, making him wince. When the wire snaps between his jaws with a _twang_ , he finds it snaring his tongue, drawing blood, whole again. He traces the humanoid face with long fingers and hopes he can rip it from the others, when he has enough energy. It’s too much like _them_ to stay. He has to destroy it, he has to. He wonders if hell can feel his anger, his disappointment, and the worst of it - cold acceptance.

_This is my existence now. This is what my loyalty is worth._

Perhaps it makes some of the higher ranked demons crueler, knives sharper, forever a echo of him. _Good._ After all, he had made them, out of smoke and indignation, doubt even.

_So this is what it is, to be a God. To be reflected. At least now, the earth will know. Will it echo back to Him? Can I reach that far? Did he even leave that channel open?_

Lucifer knows at least one is left intact - or perhaps it was a merciful mistake. He is not cut off from time, albeit it works strangely. His grace’s precognition was probably skewed in the fall; possible futures and revenant pasts smashing together. So when the wind stings hair into his eyes and he hears his brother’s voice, he knows the cage has not sent him over the edge, yet. He turns and sees his older brother, the cold, closed off expression replayed on Gabriel’s face as well.  
  
“Not you too,” Lucifer says.

“We were told to love them. What you did-” Gabriel whispers, every eye wide, imploring. Siding with what’s easiest, what his oldest brother tells him, God’s orders. _Hearsay._ For a moment, Lucifer wishes he could be that again. Trusting to a fault. He wonders what Gabriel will receive in return for it, and the indifferent look Michael is giving him stings.

“Look down there and tell me to love those beasts, now!” The flinch he is rewarded with gives him no satisfaction. “You’re always so afraid, little brother, when you’re surrounded by heaven and the rest of us, in the light of- ” Lucifer snaps, and swallows, winding his arms around his ribs, grace roiling with rage. “You’re nothing but an echo. Repeating what you’ve been told,” he finishes.

It’s worse that Michael is so calm, putting himself between his younger siblings. Each face stays facing Lucifer as if he were a predator, a threat. A hand pushing Gabriel backwards is an insult Lucifer does not miss.

“Not _us_ , Lu. Not anymore,” Michael murmurs.

Lucifer recoils. He can’t help it, though his brain screams it’s a weakness, begging him to lash out, to erase the rejection with violence - love used against him _again._

“I have my orders,” Michael murmurs, and something behind his many eyes steels itself. It is the first time the light of an angel’s grace blinds Lucifer, and the last.

The cold draws him back as the bars ice over, the cage recognising he’s leant against them too long, the burn like holy fire. His eyelids close.  

It is a short respite.

Behind his many eyes, he sees the constellation that he had helped bring into existence, a collaboration which had warmed him with pride.  The undeniable proof that he meant something, and cast his mark on a masterpiece of a planet. _I still mean something,_ he thinks. He wonders if it’s been ripped out of the sky. Wishes for it. For any kind of evidence the other angels might see - their creator is full of spite, and unforgiving. Lucifer prays that it has - wondering if anything will hear - just so _they_ can’t lay their weak eyes on it. _It wasn’t meant for you. Lives so meaningless, minds that can’t process anything on a molecular level, violence and hate, so imperfect._ He supposed that’s what he is now, but at least it was justified, he had given everything for that loyalty. And now it had shattered.

He opens his eyes and sees his eldest brother squinting at him, the sun’s glare behind his brother’s head makes him wince. _Lightbringer, blinded by a cage,_ he wants to roll his eyes.  It takes a moment to adjust to the brightness, but slowly the glare fades, and his brother’s expression is impassive, as usual. Lucifer wonders if this is a hallucination, or a future, and doesn’t much care either way.

“I’m not sorry,” he says, in case his brother has orders to get Lucifer to repent. He doubts it would get him anywhere if he wanted to. Michael’s expression doesn’t change. Funny, how Lucifer had always read emotions from the humanoid faces, and never the animals.  The animals mannerisms were unfamiliar now, whereas the human-likeness hadn’t faded from his memory, a bright hot scar in hate like his fall.

A hand pulls him up from the hunched, curled up position he’d been in, and it takes Lucifer a moment for his spine to click back where it should be. His lungs shudder, and he waits until they quiet into a normal rhythm, the relief far more intense than he would have believed.

His brother watches him with regretful eyes.

“Don’t tell me you regret stuffing me in that thing,” Lucifer snaps. “I don’t have any patience left. There’s no end to time in there, and let me tell you it’s been a _long, long time_ ,” he grits his teeth, remembering it’s not quite true, though he has no idea how long has passed. Seeing into time is not something he wants taken away.

“Little brother, I heard every scream. I was the one who raised you, after all. That bond does not fade, even if the Cage conceals it from you. In time you will come to see that you were wrong,” Michael replies levelly.

“You can’t resist an _I told you so,_ even when you’re mistaken. Must be an older sibling thing, right?” The silence lays thick between them, and Lucifer notices Michael’s hands wringing together. He can’t tear his gaze away. “One day, all this conflict will eat you, and you’ll go insane.” Lucifer murmurs. “Where’s Gabe? Were you worried I’d eat him?”

Lucifer swats Michael’s hands apart. Remembering a different time. _Stop the fidget, stop the thought._

“I trust you, you know. Still.” Michael says, and Lucifer jerks back. “That part of you that still worries for the rest of us,” _not the rest_ , his smile adds and its bitterness fills Lucifer with resentment.

_You weren’t the one who lost everything,_ Lucifer manages to think, waiting for words to come to him - anything at all.

“That’s cruel, even for you,” he hisses. “Why am I even here? You’re as bad as them. Those beasts poking animals with sticks to see if they still have any fight left after they’ve beaten them.”

Something in Michael’s demeanor flickers. “It was hoped you were salvageable.”

_A spare part, of course. Because an archangel without a purpose is nothing but a phantom limb, wondering when it will disappear._

Numbly, Lucifer feels Michael’s hand brushing one of his faces. “But you’ve lost part of you.”

He swats the hand away, trying not to feel like a fledgling in a tantrum. “Oh did you miss the part where you swung that sword at me? _On fire_? Something about the Cage you might not know: there's nothing to put a fire out down there, and the cold takes its damn time, no matter how sub-zero it gets! I’ve lost everything, brother. You were too afraid to stand with me.”

“And beneath all that, you still worry about us. No longer trusting God, your rage, heightens it, it doesn’t diminish it. You care about us, about our family,” surprise and admiration colours Michael’s words, somewhere far away.

“Don’t tell me He admires that,” Lucifer whispers.

“Actually, he does,” Michael says, except it doesn’t sound like his brother anymore. “Take him home,” the voice says, and all of his eyes start to glow.

Another bright light, and Lucifer feels it’s searing something from him. A black hole where he used to care, growing and growing. He opens his eyes to the Cage, and slides down the barbs, not caring how they rip.

Michael’s words make sense, now. God only wanted the minuscule part of him that still believed in his Father, snatching it from him. After all, Michael couldn’t open the Cage himself. His brother’s only purpose in that conversation was making sure there was still a part of Lucifer to take. Using him, as Lucifer had been used. He wonders if his brother regrets it, like he regretted his orders. Part of that made it hurt less.

_This is not home, you hypocrite. I will find a way out of here._

It plagues him that he doesn’t know what God wants. Why he had been halved. Wasn’t it enough to fall? To be tortured for eternity, with nothing but shards of time to keep him somewhat sane? He realises with a start that the connection to time wasn’t an accident. It was a way to stop him giving up, keeping his rage alive. And it pulls him in again. Something new being written. He recognises he’s being exploited, but he ignores it.

He sees Death stepping out of a white... _cadillac_ \- the shard fills in the word - and Lucifer watches the Horseman walk through the humans with no shadow. The smile on his face has Lucifer wondering if he will see it again.

He sees himself say _Whatever you do, you will always end up here._

And somewhere, he feels the part of him that God stole, he feels it changing into something tangible, something he can feel even in the Cage. A tiny ripple in the void, and he feels something slipping from him, replaced with a name, with a newer, better purpose.

“Sam,” he says, knowing the rightness of it as the word leaves his mouth, the first he’s uttered in the Cage. The name has the walls shudder, and Lucifer grins.

  



End file.
